[Wednesday ]3:29 p.m.
"Michael, you look marvelous. It's so good to see you again. I really mean that. The years have treated you well." Eva Borodin leaned back against the gray fabric of the Saab's headrest and appraised him.
"You don't look half bad yourself." Vance smiled to himself as he returned the favor. Vintage Eva, ladling on the flattery. But she was smashing, just as he remembered—the coal-black hair, the smoldering eyes, the high Slavic cheekbones. Then, too, her every gesture was spiked with the promise of Olympic sensuality; he remembered that as well. Everything about her spoke of a time and place far away, where there were no rules. Eva, the eternal Eva. With a Ph.D. "Everything's just the same."
That part wasn't entirely true. There had been some changes, probably for the better. Instead of a plunging neckline and a fortune in gold accessories, she was wearing a blue silk blouse, form-fitting designer jeans with an eighty-dollar scarf for a belt, and lambskin boots. Far more demure than the old Eva. What had happened to the dangling turquoise earrings, enough musky perfume to obscure radar, at least one endangered fur draped somewhere?
The years had definitely mellowed her. The Slavic passion seemed curbed today, the same way her hair had been trimmed down to a pageboy. Maybe, he thought, this was her new look: the Russian aristocrat of the nineties.
"No, Michael, I'm different now. Or I'm trying to be."
She laughed, flashed her come-on smile, and tried to toss her missing hair.
Whoops, he thought. Sure, you've changed.
"Being formally promoted to director of SIGINT brings responsibilities," she continued.